Masking tape is a very popular and widely-used product by professional painters and handymen generally and by consumers broadly. Masking tape may be used for painting applications, dust abatement, fixing posters and artwork to walls and windows in an office or classroom setting, or other general purposes for which tape may be applied. Specifically with respect to the painting application, a flat masking tape used on the fringe of a painting surface may create unwanted hard paint edges.
While these hard paint edges may be acceptable and even desirable in some painting applications, in the automotive refinishing business, for instance, these types of edges are undesirable. Also, the automotive refinishing business is challenging when refinishing around or near automobile door jambs, front hoods and trunk lids where the aperture must be sealed off to prevent paint or primer from entering the passenger or engine compartment during the spray painting process.
The prior art also includes a plain, hollow tube of tape. A strip of tape is wound around overlapping itself to form a hollow tube. This tube is then used with some painting edge applications. However, it was found that the hollow tape tube alone was flimsy and prone to folding over and collapsing on itself. It does not maintain its round tubular shape very well, especially around curves and sharp corners.